Yellow Journalism To Blame For Pot Prohibition?
May 15th, 2008 By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy DirectorShare this Article
Wow! You know there’s something to this
story when it’s the journalists themselves espousing it.
Writing Wrongs
via The Philadelphia WeeklyBad journalism is to blame for marijuana prohibition. … The truth is, most people who use drugs — both legal and illegal — do so responsibly and without any noticeable detrimental effect. [Yet,] since the 1980s, drug policy — with the help of the press — has demonized drug users.
… Scientific studies are frequently reported in the media without the reporter having read more than a press release, and without any regard to sample size.
… In other cases, the news media ignore important drug–related stories — such as the federal government listing cannabis as Schedule I, alongside heroin and LSD; or that the past two presidential administrations have arrested patients authorized by states to use medical marijuana.
… It’s sad how long people have been pointing out this bad journalism, and how little anything seems to change.
Back in March I wrote an essay for Alternet.org dissecting how the mainstream media falsely reported that inhaling cannabis poses a greater cancer risk than smoking tobacco — based on a study that concluded the opposite result. More recently, I lectured on this topic before attendees at the Fifth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics. It’s a subject worth revisiting.
So why does the media consistently ‘get the story wrong’ when it comes to pot? While I don’t believe there’s any grand conspiracy going on, I do believe that journalists in general engage in several bad habits that negatively skew their cannabis coverage.
First, beat writers too often base their pot-related health and science stories on press releases rather than actual data.
Second, the mainstream media often chooses to selectively highlight data implicating cannabis’s dangers while ignoring data implicating its relative safety.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, mainstream news stories about pot seldom make references to previously published research (research that typically disproves the crux of the media’s latest scare story) or place new data in context.
Writing in the journal Science nearly 40 years ago, New York state university sociologist Erich Goode aptly observed: “[T]ests and experiments purporting to demonstrate the ravages of marijuana consumption receive enormous attention from the media, and their findings become accepted as fact by the public. But when careful refutations of such research are published, or when latter findings contradict the original pathological findings, they tend to be ignored or dismissed.”
How little has changed.
Tags: context, Erich Goode, mainstream media, prohibition, yellow journalism
May 19th, 2008 at 7:03 am
such massive confusion surrounding legalization might indicate a conspiracy.
see movie trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC03Kt92duo
June 13th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
“Conspiracy?!”
I agree with Mr. Armentano; there is no “conspiracy.” Just stop and think a moment, what is involved in actually pulling off such a thing.
Our Government only *wishes* that they had the means and power required to orchestrate a “conspiracy” of this magnitude!
Those who see “indications of conspiracy” in things like this are dismally ignorant of the complexities of human societies.
There is only one force under the stars that can possibly accomplish such a nefarious purpose:
Human Stupidity.
The cure has always been the same: Knowledge!
I saw cell phones popping corn kernels in you-tube also, and I know that’s a lie also.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I simplly think that for too long marijuana has been demonized but government studys, and those studys have been put in the media, always implicating some new lethal and dangerous effect of smoking marijuana. so people who have not tried pot simply eat all they are feed by the media without questioning the fact that the studys are comming from bais partys.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Wow
The News sent out for the public is alwayz Negative
i Think its time to say something Positive About Marijuana for once…
February 10th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
[...] to get the story wrong when it comes to pot? Good question. You can read my abbreviated answer here. And while you?re on NORML?s site, get the skinny on what the scientific literature really has to [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 9:29 am
i love marijuana
February 11th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Its ok for hundreds of thousands of drunk people to kill innocent people on the roads. Its ok for millions of people to smoke ciggerets and get lung cancer driving the cost of health care up. Its ok to be obeese. Its ok to sell and buy sick twisted porn, promoting sick child abuse and other sick shit. But its not ok to smoke a natural thing that God put on this planet. Just another example of what we allowed our society to become.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
all of this talk is well and good, but are we accomplishing anything? no… with the mindset of so many stuck in the victorian era is will take our actions as responsible consumers of marijuana to change peoples thinking.
PFC D.D.
US Army
Taji, Iraq
February 11th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
[...] to get the story wrong when it comes to pot? Good question. You can read my abbreviated answer here. And while you?re on NORML?s site, get the skinny on what the scientific literature really has to [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
[...] to get the story wrong when it comes to pot? Good question. You can read my abbreviated answer here. And while you’re on NORML’s site, get the skinny on what the scientific literature [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I have smoked marijuana for going on two years now and all you ever hear from reporters and doctors is how dangerous smoking marijuana is for your health they fail to mention that anually marijuana causes 0 deaths!!!! compared to alcohol and other harder drugs which take countless lives every yr. Basically the government has no proof to back up their theory that marijuana is supposedly “dangerous”. I also can’t beleive they would single out phelps for hitting a bong that is his own personal business no jackass news reporter needs to stick their nose in his business so what if the man wanted to kick back and smoke HE JUST WON EVERY GOLD MEDAL IN HIS SPORT!!! They made way to big of a deal about it was stupid and ridiculous the man is a hero. Him smoking weed didn’t effect or hurt anyone. I pray one day it will be legalized so these journalists and doctors will shut their mouths and so I can live in peace knowing when I drive down the road im not gonna be pulled over and sent to jail because I am possesing marijuana.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:35 am
It doesn’t take a grand conspiracy to spread propaganda. All it takes is money and a willing PR firm. Read “toxic sludge is good for you” and you’ll see how to make the most noble of ancient plants into the 21st century scourge against all that’s good.
February 14th, 2009 at 3:38 am
The creation and existence of the Drug Czar office is a grand conspiracy. That we would give near-God like status to a shill paid to lie about marijuana is one of the more bizarre episodes in our history. Many powerful interests keep this vaudeville act going.
February 14th, 2009 at 11:25 am
The majority of funding for the Partnership for a Drug Free America (This is your brain on drugs fried eggs commercial) comes from the BIG THREE: Alcohol, Tobacco and Pharmaceutical industries that have spent billions of dollars on advertising and which is then used to control the media.
The BIG THREE would see their bottom lines tank if legal cannabis were added to the competitive pot.
Tobacco runs this country through its money laundering operations for the CIA and illegal Drug Industry which is run through Bank of America which is the money center that controls all of US.
Ron
February 15th, 2009 at 12:24 am
lame excuse. don’t blame the media. be the media. bah!
February 15th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
There are many media outlets, like the papers owned by the McClatchys or papers like the Wall Street Journal, who do indeed DELIBERATELY try to deceive, by focusing only on printing negative information about Cannabis — even medical Cannabis — and by basically ignoring (& not covering or dumping) any of the positive information.
It is not a conspiracy in the sense that all the owners of far-right media meet each year — like the Bilderbergs — to discuss how to keep Medical Cannabis illegal. I don’t think there’s any organized press opposition to Medical Cannabis.
But many media outlets do indeed have institutional biases against the facts. And many Pharmaceutical companies could lose a significant chunk of their business if Cannabis were a legal medicine (remember, Cannabis products were some of the most widely prescribed medicines, until the needle & opiates, which we now know have significant limitations, especially when treating chronic conditions).
To see an example of the yellow stuff I’m talking about, take a look at how much press the Wall Street Journal gives FDA-medications; and then, take a look at their coverage of medical marijuana, an option that is less toxic and less fatal than most FDA-options.
While it may be difficult/impossible to establish proof/evidence that Big Pharma is paying off the media or lawmakers, our medias’ and lawmakers’ willingness to perpetuate lies is awfully suspicious - in lieu of the facts (the media has been hammered with the facts and credible sources for years; many of them know the truth but are indeed ignoring it. I know this for a fact, because I personally have flooded every large media outlet with all the positive research and all the medical support, with all credible sources).
We need proof our lawmakers are being paid off - before we can fairly make those charges (any whistle-blowers sick of the lies?). But given the way some media outlets cover the topic of medical Cannabis, I can understand why people feel there may be some type of organized media/lawmaker/Big Pharma conspiracy TO KEEP MEDICAL CANNABIS ILLEGAL, given approx. 75-percent of the U.S. wants access to it, but many lawmakers and media continue to spout reefer madness.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
There was a study done by the government in collusion with W.R. Hearst and a few others to see just how many newspapers would have to be owned and controlled in order to control the US news media. They came up with something like the eight major newspapers, and they were right. They used it to sell the US a war. Now the US gets special editions of magazines (Time Magazine here was about Lindsay Lohan; Europe’s was about US politics with info we don’t get). Pot studies are redacted before the US ever sees them. Some are just disappeared, and if they’re government, it takes a FOI Act to get it, and even then you’ll likely find it redacted for “reasons of National Security”. There’s a LOT of information we are not allowed to see on any news shows or in magazines or newspapers. While there are a lot of people on the Internet, there aren’t enough
Sorry, but there IS a government conspiracy; it just doesn’t begin there. It begins with the super-wealthy “Elites” - the old banking families like Rothschilds, And some of the newer ones like Ford, Bush and others. There are maybe 400 families who own or control something like over 90% of the world’s monetary assets. You need to read a bit more, and take a look at what never makes it into the news. There are so many people out there who think, “It can’t happen here” that it IS happening and no one will believe it until it’s done.
Ian